Erin S. Riley is the author of the Sons of Odin Series, Viking historical fiction with a heavy dash of romance, adventure, and suspense. Odin’s Shadow, A Flame Put Out, and Oath Breaker follow Selia, a young Irish woman, as she’s forced to marry a Viking warlord and is drawn into a perilous world of obsession, betrayal, and madness. As dark secrets come to light, Selia must make a heartrending choice that might well destroy everything she holds dear.

Erin Riley has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in clinical counseling. She is also a board certified lactation consultant and has had extensive training in maternal-child health. Since Erin was a child, she has been fascinated with human nature and what motivates behavior. She enjoys writing stories that reflect real life: Erin’s books feature complicated, imperfect characters who love deeply, make reckless decisions, and try again until they get it right.

A lifelong lover of books, Erin taught herself to read at the age of four and hasn’t been without a book since. She is an equal-opportunity reader of fiction and non-fiction, and her shelves are filled with books on archaeology, anthropology, and general history. The social history of women and their place in society across the ages is a favorite reading topic of Erin’s.

Erin has a bit of an obsession with all things Viking and owns an embarrassing number of reference books on the Viking age. While reading about berserkers she had an epiphany and realized that the crazed, shield-biting men of sagas were actually suffering from a mental illness. On that day the character of Alrik Ragnarson was born.

Erin is drawn to any creative pursuit, from making hand-stitched quilts to producing mini-movies for family and friends from home videos. But writing has always been her passion. When Erin isn’t writing, she enjoys spending time with her two wonderful children, reading anything she can get her hands on, watching football, and renovating her house with her husband of 18 years. Who just happens to look like a Viking!

In ninth-century Ireland, Selia is a girl on the verge of womanhood, frustrated by the confines of her gender and resentful of the freedom her brother boasts of. Intelligent and resourceful in a time when neither is valued in a female, she longs for an escape from her sheltered existence. Fascinated by the tales of Viking raids told by her maidservant, Selia’s hunger for independence is fed through the stories of heathen ferocity she hears at the woman’s knee.

A decision to sneak to the city’s harbor to view the Viking longships leads to an encounter with Alrik Ragnarson, a charismatic Viking warlord whose outward beauty masks a dark and tortured mind. With the knowledge that her father is about to announce her betrothal to a man she doesn’t love, Selia marries Alrik and within a day is on the longship bound for Norway and a new life.

While Selia’s relationship with her new husband grows, her friendship with his brother Ulfrik grows as well. And as Alrik’s character flaws come to light and tension mounts between the two brothers, Selia begins to have misgivings about her hasty marriage . . . especially when a secret from the past is revealed, one that threatens to destroy them all.

A Flame Put Out (Sons of Odin Series book 2) Selia’s saga continues in Book Two of the SONS OF ODIN series . . .

As Selia struggles with the harsh reality of existence as the wife of a Viking berserker, a devastating loss pulls Alrik deeper into madness, while a secret Selia desperately wants to keep hidden comes to light, threatening everything she holds dear.

Is Selia’s love for Alrik enough to keep her in Norway? Or will the protection offered by Alrik’s brother Ulfrik sway her to leave?

Oath Breaker (Sons of Odin Series book 3) Releasing 12/30/15. The exciting conclusion of the Sons of Odin trilogy:

Sometimes the right man has been there all along…
Selia has fled Norway and her Viking berserker husband to protect her children from his rages. His brother Ulfrik, having long loved Selia from afar, offers his protection. As Selia uncovers the man he is, love blossoms in her heart where there was only emptiness. But will their newfound love survive when Alrik returns to claim what is his?

*Note I have very much enjoyed the first two books and had the third on pre order. It looks like it is now out and I can have another awesome read*

This post was in part spurred when my doctor asked for my signature on a petition to ban the use of computers in every class, which really is a terrible idea as it does restrict the ability for developing original thought in young minds. Books are where learning should be happening. Which comes around to the subject of history or the increasing lack of it as a school subject.

What is so important about what happened in the past to a load of dead people? Evolution of intelligence and social behavior, in a few words. As a species, we have learned from the triumphs or the mistakes of our ancestors. A person wouldn’t plant fruit bushes in a soggy field as they would die, but rice? Oh yes. Certain behavior patterns have proven to be good for the health and happiness of people over the years. Basic simple things like don’t kill people, take their property, or molest their women.

Yes, molest is a fairly big taboo going right back to when men started to carve out bits of land and claim ownership. Naturally, they wanted to pass the land to their sons but the thing about fatherhood, that is until modern times, is a man could never really be sure if he were the biological father of his own children unless he suppressed women into subservience, hence the huge taboo about molestation of the female person. The more sophisticated the society, strangely enough, the more the danger of molestation happened. Going back to history, say from about 1830 to 1914 there was a big surge in moralism driven by various religions. While this resulted in the virtual cloistering of most women in one way or another, it also resulted in the biggest surge of prostitution, deviant sexual behavior, (I don’t mean homosexuality, which has been around since the dawn of man, but rather nasty and dangerous practices such as auto erotica and pornography to name a couple), sanctimonious behavior, racial discrimination and outright brinkmanship.

So looking back on history, it is easy to identify what was bad and why it didn’t work. Totoal sexual repression of young people was and still is one of the worst choices. Sometimes those instincts break out in the young and then people get hurt. Take a young man and tell him he can’t as much as kiss a girl until he marries one when he may be somewhere in his twenties and that is going to be a tough call. All the sanctimonious preaching in the world will not stop nature any more than the ancient King Canute of old England could order the tide to stop coming in from his throne on the beach. He gave up when his feet got wet. Of course, if the lapsed youth happens to be famous he and his family will get crucified by the press. Perhaps a better understanding of the intricacies of the lessons history has to offer might have shown these people that what they were insisting upon from their kids was way off to the left field. The number one lesson history teaches is that any form of suppression will ultimately lead to rebellion.

That said, this is a sad day for some people and the press should back off before they do more harm. Yes, someone did a wrong thing as a result of other people doing the wrong thing for what they thought were right reasons. It doesn’t really matter after all these years. What does matter and did back then, is the victims in the case. The lid has been wrenched off the jar of their very modest world and left them exposed. They are the reason this press hounding must stop and the reason why children must be educated properly in all the subjects, so the mistakes of the past are not repeated.

I read an article an a newspaper yesterday that stated New York schools wouldn’t be offering social studies/history on the curriculum and instead be concentrating on the core subjects of English and Maths. Mmm, smacks of tunnel vision to me.

How can a person study English Literature without Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Homer, et al? Not really possible, but how can a person study these when they are not in context of a historical period? If the life and times of the stories are not known, then how much sense will they make to the modern child? I reckon it would have about the same impact as the Muppets.

As a species, we collectively learn by our mistakes and generally try not to repeat them. What happens when the slate gets wiped clean? How far is this anti history going to go? Are we to lose nursery rhythms as a lot of these are based on history? Hope this doesn’t come to pass.